Lost with Lieutenant Pike / How from the Pawnee Village the boy named Scar Head marched with the young American Chief clear into the Snowy Mountains; how in the dead of winter they searched for the Lost River and thought that they had found it; and how the Spanish Soldiery came upon them and took them down to Santa Fé of New Mexico, where another surprise awaited them

by Edwin L. Sabin

The warriors numbered eighteen. It was a small party, for a great nation, when one remembered that the Spanish had sent several hundred and that the Padoucahs or Ietans (the Comanches) numbered thousands. The Osages of course need not be counted. The Pawnees thought little of Osages—a poor and miserable people.

The Spanish had left a very broad, plain trail. The Americans were following it, although it was an old trail and the Spanish chief had been gone several weeks. It stretched straight southward, toward the Kansas country, and the Padoucah and the Spanish country, beyond. If the young chief Pike followed far enough, in that direction, he would have need of all his medicine to get out again. But perhaps he would turn west, in time, and aim for the unknown mountains, many days’ journey—although what he expected to find there, nobody might say.

It was the home of the Utahs, who warred upon plains people and were friendly to only the Spanish.

He was a bold man, this young Chief Pike.

The march southward continued all day, pursuing the trail, until when the sun was getting low and the shadows long a place was reached where the Spanish had camped.

Chief Pike examined the signs. The Spanish of Chief Melgares had camped in a circle. There were fifty-nine burnt spots, from campfires. Allowing six warriors to each fire, that counted up over three hundred and fifty. The grasses had been eaten off by the horses.

Chief Pike led his eighteen warriors on a little distance, and ordered camp for the night beside a fork of the river of the Kansas. Scar Head was well treated; the American medicine man or “doctor” eyed him a great deal, but did him no harm; the warrior Sparks grinned at him, and beckoned to him, but he did not go. It was a cheerful camp, with the men singing and joking in their strange language.

He ate at the fire of the two chiefs and the medicine-man. They and Baroney the interpreter talked together. Soon after dark everybody went to bed, except the guards, and except Chief Pike, who sat up, in his lodge, making black marks on white leaves, by the fire of a sputtering white stick!

Scar Head rolled in his buffalo robe, at one side of the lodge; the couch for the medicine-man (who was already on it) and for the chief, was at the other side. He stayed awake as long as he could, watching lest the medicine-man should try to feel of the spot on his head, again; but he was tired, and before the chief had finished making marks, he fell asleep.